What we understand by comfort in a house was absent. There was the fire on the hearth in the middle of the floor; in this room the people of the house, from the highest to the lowest, had their meals; and there, on the floor, most of them slept at night. Cooking was done almost entirely in the open air. CHAPTER XVI In Norman Times When Duke William of Normandy became King of England, the power of the Crown was greater than it had ever been before. All the old folk-land had become king's land. Many knights had followed Duke William from Normandy into England, and expected to be provided for by their leader. The lands belonging to King Harold, and those of the Saxon eorls who had died fighting at Senlac, King William regarded as his own. These he granted to his followers, on condition that they acknowledged him as their overlord, and followed him in war when required. This was a stricter condition than had ever before been required in England. The Normans were used to it, and it did not seem at all strange to them. Neither was it so very strange to the Saxon nobles and thanes. Most of them were allowed to keep their estates if they took the oath of allegiance to the king as the Normans did. Of course they grumbled: it was only natural that they should do so; but if they did not acknowledge the king in this way they were looked upon as rebels, and lost their lands. King William was very careful, in the grants which he made, not to put too much power into the hands of his nobles. The old vills of Saxon times were now pretty generally called manors. When the king granted land, it was not given in huge slices--whole counties, halves, and quarters of counties--to this great follower of his or to that one. Between the old vills, or manors, there were often wide stretches of the king's own land, the old folk-land. If he had granted to a Norman knight a quarter of a county or so, he would have been giving away much of his own land. Besides that, the king did not mean his followers to become too powerful. He granted the land in separate manors. It is quite true that in every county we can, so to speak, put our finger on some Norman knight who came over with William I, and say that he got the lion's share of the manors in that county. Thus in Hampshire there was Hugh de Port, and in Hertfordshire Eustace de Boulogne. But their manors did not all lie side by side, nor were they conveniently close together. Just as a villein's holding was spread out in various fields, so the manors, or fiefs, which a knight held under King William were often scattered over various counties.